The Mind of Man

Abstract

MR. SPILLER suffers apparently from the constitutional defects of extreme prolixity, and a marked contempt for the views of psychologists who have the misfortune to prove themselves “unscientific” by disagreeing with himself. The reader who is ready to overlook these deficiencies will find much interesting discussion of the principal problems of psychology in his book, though scarcely, I think, any considerable fresh contributions to the science. The author's fundamental point of view may be indicated by his definition of psychology as the study of the functional needs of the central nervous system. His book exhibits great psychological learning, but is marred, I believe, by an ineradicable inconsistency of principle. He does not seem to have definitely made up his mind whether the processes of mental life are truly teleological (as he verbally asserts) or purely mechanical (as he frequently implies). Thus he exalts the significance of habit, or, as he calls it, “organised reaction,” and minimises that of pleasure, pain and volition in determining action to a degree which leaves it a mystery how a new purposive reaction ever gets established.

The Mind of Man.

By Gustav Spiller. Pp. xiv + 552. (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd., 1902.)